UK Busybodies Target Pointed Kitchen Knives, Gun Tattoos
Don’t ever underestimate the British capacity for combining the oppressive with the doltish. This week, the United Kingdom’s decades-long campaign against all things martial sunk to a fresh low when one of the Queen’s more domineering subjects floated a ban on the sale, and possibly the possession, of traditional kitchen utensils. Not to be outdone, other British busybodies demanded satisfaction from a professional athlete whose firearm body art they found objectionable.

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

Does Global Warming increase total atmospheric water vapor (TPW)?
Some have speculated that the distribution of relative humidity would remain roughly constant as climate changes (Allen and Ingram 2002). Specific humidity can be thought of as “absolute” humidity or the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. We will call this amount “TPW” or total precipitable water with units of kg/m2. As temperatures rise, the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship states that the equilibrium vapor pressure above the oceans should increase and thus, if relative humidity stays the same, the total water vapor or specific humidity will increase. The precise relationship between specific humidity and temperature in the real world is unknown but is estimated to be between 0.6 to 18% (10-90%ile range) per degree Celsius from global climate model results (Allen and Ingram 2002).

China eyes its next prize – the Mekong
Beijing’s islands-building in the South China Sea and their militarisation, replete with surface-to-air missiles, is near complete. With guile, threat, and coercion, China can now seize control of one of the main transport arteries of Southeast Asia, making a mockery of international laws and norms.

Epitaph
Without fanfare elements of a new cold war are being put into place by the Trump administration, the European Union and China.

Jon Tester goes to court to save his seat
It’s become something of a cliche this year to say that Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana) is in trouble. He’s been at or near the top of everyone’s list of Dem senators ripe for having his seat flipped. Donald Trump carried Montana by 20 points in 2016 and there has been no appreciable “blue wave” in evidence in Big Sky Country since then. Tester has done an admirable job of portraying himself as a Blue Dog in two election cycles, swerving far enough toward the middle to attract sufficient Republican and independent votes to win two terms, but the times have been changing.

Supreme Court Sides with Cake Baker
The Supreme Court has issued its ruling in the much anticipated Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and the religious liberty of the cake baker, Jack Phillips, won out by a 7 – 2 vote. It appears at a first quick skim that it is a narrow ruling, but until I can wade into it more thoroughly it will be difficult to tell whether a new and clear doctrine as been laid out for future cases. I doubt it. But the fact that it is a 7 – 2 vote (Breyer and Kagan joined the Republican justices) ought to tilt the playing field in favor of protection for religious liberty despite the ambiguities of the language.

You won’t have Keith Ellison to kick around any more
Assuming the Washington rumor mill is still functional, we’ll be learning shortly that Congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) will be turning in a pair of resignations shortly. First, he’s going to drop out of his role at the DNC citing irreconcilable differences with the current DNC Chair. But on top of that, he’ll be leaving Congress as well, choosing to focus his efforts on becoming the new Attorney General in his home state. Presumably, that will make it easier to bring lawsuits against the White House himself rather than waiting around for others to sue the President.

New York Judge Supports “Personhood” for Chimpanzees
Now is the time to put laws in effect at the federal and state levels prohibiting non-human animals, flora, and geological features from being treated as “persons” in courts, or accorded “rights” of any kind.

NY Times Reporter and Senate Staffer Caught in Sex-for-Leaks Scandal
The former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee has been arrested after lying to the FBI about illegally leaking classified information to a young reporter he dated for three years. The arrest exposed James A. Wolfe as the source of multiple leaks of sensitive national security information — including details of the investigation of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page — to New York Times reporter Ali Watkins. Wolfe, 57, had been in a sexual relationship with Watkins, a 2014 Temple University graduate who previously worked for BuzzFeed and Politico before joining the Times late last year.

Another Reason to Avoid Massachusetts
They have superior institutions of higher learning in Massachusetts, such as Northeastern University, a private school where the annual cost of attendance is $65,737 including room and board. What are parents paying so much for their children to learn at Northeeastern? Well, they have a department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, which offers such courses as “Gender, Social Justice, and Transnational Activism” (WMNS 3100) and “Sexual Orientation and Gender Expression in Practice and Policy” (WMNS 2800).

International

A historic exodus is leaving Venezuela without teachers, doctors and electricians
This collapsing socialist state is suffering one of the most dramatic outflows of human talent in modern history, with Aquiles Nazoa offering a glimpse into what happens when a nation begins to empty out. Vast gaps in Venezuela’s labor market are causing a breakdown in daily life, and robbing this nation of its future. The exodus is broad and deep – an outflow of doctors, engineers, oil workers, bus drivers and electricians.

Daniel Ortega Is STILL A Brutal Communist Scumbag
Out of office for 17 years, Ortega’s Sandinistas managed to regain power in 2007, and since then they’re gotten up to their old tricks, albeit in a lower-key, “we’re no longer backed by Soviet money” way.

Getting Italy wrong
“The real challenge that the populist coalition in Italy poses to the EU is one of policy, not of democracy.” So writes Angelos Chryssogelos of Chatham House.

The Generic Ballot and the Enthusiasm Gap
Will Democrats take back the House this November? For months, polls showed the Democratic party well ahead on the generic-ballot question, which simply asks voters whether they plan to vote for a Republican or Democrat for Congress come November. But the margin has tightened since — the RealClearPolitics average shows the Democrats up 3.2 percent.

In Shakeup at Turkish Soccer Club, a Worrisome Sign for Erdogan?
A leadership change at a Turkish sports club has sent a message rife with political undertones, with some seeing the ouster of its longtime chairman as a sign of a tide turning against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, three weeks before he stands for reelection himself.

A canary named John
From the videos you can gather that John Sunol is not the brightest spark to have graced this world. And you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to grasp the fact that Sunol suffers from some kind of physical and mental incapacity.

The Right to Kill
Should Brazil keep its Amazon tribes from taking the lives of their children?

Nicaraguan socialist Daniel Ortega turns tyrant…Why does this keep happening?
It’s never a good sign when your socialist President sends his police and unofficial goon squad into the street to start shooting protesters against his regime. We’ve seen this playbook recently in Venezuela under President Nicolas Maduro and now something very similar in Nicaragua where former socialist revolutionary Daniel Ortega seems intent on ruling for life.

3 Big Questions About Spygate
On Monday, Dan Bongino – a host I particularly enjoy – tackled the “Spygate” issue on his show. He took issue with last Thursday’s show, in which I expressed my doubts about the veracity of the narrative going around that the FBI maliciously targeted the Trump campaign during the 2016 race in order to undermine Trump himself. In particular, I expressed three doubts. First, I asked why the FBI and Hillary campaign didn’t release the most damaging information about supposed Trump/Russia collusion during the campaign; second, I asked why the FBI didn’t target members of the Trump campaign other than those most obviously connected with Russia if they were truly going beyond their brief to target Trump himself; finally, I asked why Trump didn’t just declassify the underlying materials showing the alleged conspiracy.

“Doxxing” and Secondary Boycotts
One of the favorite harassment tactics of the Left is a variation on an illegal labor-union tactic known as a secondary boycott – “a boycott of an employer with which a union does not have a dispute that is intended to induce the employer to cease doing business with another employer with which the union does have a dispute.” This tactic is outlawed under the National Labor Relations Act, but the Left uses it habitually in its efforts to silence opposition.

On Courtesy and “Gender Equality”
Where I come from, to insult a man is to challenge him to a fight. Perhaps “progress” has eroded that old-fashioned sensibility down home since I was a boy growing up in Georgia, but surviving to adulthood was not necessarily guaranteed in the culture in which I was raised. My junior year of high school, a quarrel arose between two boys over some no-account, two-timing girl. Neither of those boys made it to graduation. One went to the graveyard, and one went to prison.

Letting Labels Do Your Thinking
Last week, I wrote a column comparing the current moment to the McCarthy era in one very narrow respect: how Donald Trump dominates the conversation on the right the way McCarthy did in his day. One must be either for Trump or against Trump, support his claims and tactics or oppose them. As I wrote in another recent column, we’re arguing about the man, not ideas. Many people did not like the column, and there are reasonable criticisms of it. There were also many unreasonable ones that mostly took the form of complaining not so much about what I wrote but that I should have written the column my critics wanted me to write or that I should have simply endorsed “Spygate” in toto.

It’s Time For A National Conversation On Taking California Away From Californians
Feel like getting depressed? Here is a map of every county in California, showing how abysmally bad the education of our youth has become in what used to be the greatest state in the union. Percent of Students Meeting or Exceeding Standards on Latest Annual State Assessments (2017) has two pull-down menus in the upper right, with two categories of standards (English language arts/literacy and mathematics) and various ethnic groups.